


it all will fall, fall right into place

by shinealightonme



Series: what useless tools ourselves [9]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Angst, Breathplay, Dissociation, Dom/sub, Established Relationship, Fisting, M/M, POV Outsider, Past Child Abuse, Trauma, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 05:28:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21131402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Adam is a hard person to take care of.





	it all will fall, fall right into place

**Author's Note:**

> I don't generally warn for mentions of child abuse in this fandom, but there's a lot of Adam processing his trauma in this one, so heads up.
> 
> I also don't generally warn for kink, but it's heavier kink than I usually write so, check the tags if that feels like it might be a problem for you.

Gansey doesn't know where Adam came up with the idea to go to a show on a Monday after work. It's the kind of thing that always rattles him disproportionately to the action taken, when he thinks he understands the inner workings of someone's head and then they defy his expectations. Some days you can't pry Adam from his desk for any cause less than a national emergency, and then out of nowhere there's this, Adam dragging Gansey out of the office because he'd lost track of time reading a law review -- Harvard, which Adam teases him for before asking if there's anything interesting.

They discuss eminent domain as they ride the elevator down, but by the time they pass through the empty lobby Gansey has gotten sidetracked onto grift in 1930s California politics. He knows he's monopolizing the conversation, but Adam listens without complaint, only breaking concentration to give a perfunctory nod to building security as they step out into the Los Angeles night.

It's considerably warmer away from the air conditioning. Gansey feels a tickle against his skin, the beginning of perspiration. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he pulls it out to find a text from Henry: _why are you keeping us waiting? do you expect me to survive the evening in the company of merely TWO gorgeous people?_

Adam tugs at his tie, loosening it. He raises his eyebrows at Gansey in wordless inquiry and then grins when Gansey reads the text aloud to him.

The evening stretches out in front of them, uncomfortably warm and already behind schedule, but no less delightful for that.

"Adam!"

Gansey's brain tries to convince him that it was Blue who called out. He has just spotted her and Ronan standing outside Henry's car, which is parking in the loading zone in front of the building, presumably with Henry at the wheel to keep the engine running.

But Gansey knows the shape that Blue's voice forms around Adam's name. This call was unfamiliar. It had come from the left, the ugly cement benches outside the now-shuttered Starbucks; Blue and Ronan are ahead of them, and down the curb to the right.

Adam doesn't look to see who called his name. He takes another few steps, each slower than the last until he grinds to a halt. And so Gansey, of course, stops beside him.

"Adam Parrish." It's not a request for attention. It's an order.

He does not concede to the demand. His hand falls carelessly from the knot of his tie down to his side. He's still staring forward, at some point across the street.

Gansey sees Blue and Ronan look over, their attention caught by the noise, just before he turns around.

The woman approaching them does not belong in Century City, faded blouse and unmade face and hair that's frizzing in the humidity; she'd stand out in the crowd of well-heeled business women who take meetings in these glittering glass office towers, if it weren't so long after five o'clock that the sidewalk is empty. There's an uncomfortable shadow of familiarity over her. Gansey has the fretful thought that he's seen her before, although he can't think where, and she doesn't spare him a glance.

She stops a few feet from them. "Adam Parrish, look at me."

Gansey wonders why she didn't walk the few extra steps to get in front of him. He wonders why Adam hasn't turned around. Adam is unfailingly polite, except on the occasions that he is directly, devastatingly rude. If he were trying to snub her he would have kept walking.

Footsteps thunder behind them and then Ronan _appears_ at Adam's side, running too fast to stop all at once. He grabs Adam's arm, as though to catch himself, or to pull Adam out of the way of some oncoming danger. Adam gets dragged along by Ronan's momentum and takes a few stumbling half-steps. The effect is that he turns around and ends up facing the woman, although it's a moment or two before his eyes focus on her.

"What are you doing here?" It sounds, impossibly, as though he has just become aware of her presence.

"What else was I supposed to do, Adam? You're too much of a hotshot to take my calls."

He doesn't respond. Gansey would think he was stonewalling her, refusing to give her anything else since she hadn't properly answered his question, except he has an uneasy sense that Adam is doing something entirely different, and he doesn't know what it is.

The woman steps closer and Ronan -- _growls_ at her, appallingly; when Gansey throws him a scandalized look, his teeth are bared. He's still holding onto Adam's arm.

The guard dog impression brings the woman up short. She casts a look at Ronan, something between apprehension and disgust, and then she disregards him to lock onto Adam once more.

She tells him, "Your father's dying."

They are a stone's throw from Santa Monica Boulevard; there's a symphony of traffic filling the air, as well as Blue's measured footsteps approaching, and somewhat distantly, Henry's honeyed tones placating someone -- security telling him to move his car, Gansey's brain fills in, accumulating trivia. But he could swear, underneath all of that, that he hears the flutter of Adam's eyelashes when he blinks.

"Okay," Adam says, flat and toneless like a computer generated voice. He steps around the woman and heads toward the parking garage. Ronan inserts himself in between them, not being careful of anyone's personal space, and hurries Adam off like a bodyguard after someone has taken a shot at his charge.

The woman takes a step back rather than let Ronan crash into her, but she looks like she intends to follow after them.

"That's quite enough, ma'am," Gansey declares in his most officious manner, the way that he hates to be. This is exactly the sort of situation that calls for it. "You've said what you came here to say."

"You think that's all I had to say?" There's a twang in her voice that's familiar to Gansey from his own time in Appalachia. He hasn't heard anything like it in Los Angeles.

He pulls a business card and a pen out of his pocket and hands them to her. "You can leave your number with me and if Adam wishes to get in touch with you, then he will do so when it's convenient for him. There's a city ordinance against loitering."

She doesn't take the card immediately, but she does take it in the end, scrawls out a number on the back of the stiff cream card stock.

"Tell that boy he better make up his mind fast" is all she says when she hands it back to Gansey.

"Hey," Blue says, suddenly, "smile for the camera," and there's a shutter sound effect as she snaps a picture with her phone. The woman's face darkens like a storm cloud, but Blue only looks down at her screen. "You should leave now," she says, a careless afterthought.

The woman nearly responds to that indignity, but then she straightens up and walks away quickly -- toward the parking garage, which Gansey doesn't care for, although with the way Ronan drives he and Adam will be long gone by now.

Gansey checks over his shoulder and sees a security guard, still hovering over Henry's car but now staring in their direction.

He asks Blue, "a photograph?"

"In case Adam wants to make a report with building security," Blue says. "In case she comes back."

"Oh." It hadn't occurred to him, but for what the firm pays in rent, there must be procedures for dealing with -- unwanted visitors. "You're marvelous."

Blue smiles at him, without any warmth, and then her eyebrows pull together in a frown. "Let's get out of here."

When they arrive at the car Gansey says, "There's been a change in plans, Henry."

"Excellent, I always crave freedom from the tyranny of plans. Where to?"

And Gansey -- doesn't know. He gazes at Blue through the rear view mirror. Her brow is still furrowed, and there's no hint of a smile.

Henry says, cautiously, "my loves?"

"Home," Blue answers, at the same time that Gansey's phone chimes:

_we're bailing_

Generally the one thing one does not have to worry about with Ronan is that he will text while driving. Perhaps Adam sent it from his phone.

Gansey thinks about the hollows of Adam's eyes, windows to a soul that wasn't home. Maybe Ronan had blown every red light and they're already back at their apartment.

Henry gets the car in gear on his second try and waves jauntily out the window to the security guard. As he pulls away from the curb and he says, "Ms. Sargent, a dastardly lout once persuaded me to buy a manual transmission -- "

"It keeps you more engaged in the act of driving," Gansey says, a response so often repeated it requires no thought.

" -- and so it falls onto your lovely shoulders to hold Gansey-boy's hand. The poor man looks rattled."

Blue leans between the front seats and places her left hand on top of Gansey's, twining her fingers through his.

"And how, dare I ask, are the esteemed partners of Parrish and Lynch?"

_I don't know,_ Gansey thinks.

"Bad," Blue says, succinct. "Let's go home, Henry, please."

-

Ronan shows up at the Venice condo the next morning before Gansey has left for work. The earliness of the hour, and the shadows under his eyes, suggest that he never went to bed.

"I got Adam shit-faced last night," he says bluntly. "He's gonna be out for a hours. Can you clear his schedule for the day? He'll be pissed if he misses something -- "

Gansey cuts him off. "Of course."

Ronan struggles to select his next words. "Adam thinks you guys should know. But he doesn't want to talk about it, so I'm going to tell you, and you're not going to ask him any fucking questions like if he's okay."

Gansey does not like those terms. Gansey does not want to agree to those terms, even while he knows he's not being presented with a choice.

"We can be cool," Blue says, words that ought to sound flippant but are as serious as any oath.

Ronan nods, acknowledging her, nods again like he's making a commitment.

"His dad beat the shit out of him," he says. "Pretty much his whole childhood. While his mom watched and blamed him for making him mad."

It's not really a shock, after last night. It's more akin to the dread that builds up in a horror movie, when you know don't know what is behind a door, only that you don't want to open it.

But Blue does inhale, sharp, like something surprised her. "His _ear_."

Gansey thinks about that, Adam's admission of his hearing impairment: _I hit my head when I was a teenager_, said like he was embarrassed, and so Gansey thought he must have been doing something -- adolescent, embarrassing.

Ronan jerks his head down and up, one small tight nod. "His dad got arrested for that one. And then he got off because they didn't have enough _evidence_. He has a deaf fucking ear, how can they say that's not evidence?"

Gansey knows exactly the arguments a lawyer would make against those charges. He doesn't want to think of them. They simply present themselves to him, as they would to anyone who had been at a criminal defense firm for three years. As they would to Adam. He does not share any of them.

Ronan shuts his eyes and breathes out, hard. "He hasn't spoken to them since college. He tried to keep in touch for a while and they didn't even care. He stopped reaching out to them and they never tried to contact him. Until last week when his mom started calling him at the office out of fucking nowhere."

"Ronan," Blue asks, "are _you_ okay?"

He stares at the air between them. His jaw clenches, like he's trying to keep the answer inside. He fails. "They hurt Adam and I couldn't stop it."

Blue leans against him, presses her face against his chest and coils an arm around him. He covers her shoulder with one hand in an unconscious gesture.

"I want to kill him," Ronan admits. "I know how I'd do it. I have a plan." To Gansey he adds, with sudden ferocity, "I'm not _going_ to, I promised Adam. It'd be a fucking waste to now, if he really is dying."

"You don't believe her?" Gansey asks.

"She shouldn't be here," Ronan says; principle supersedes fact. "I don't know what she wants but she shouldn't fucking get it."

"Unless it's what Adam wants, too."

"No. Whatever they want, it's not good for Adam."

Gansey pulls the business card slowly out of his wallet. "He could at least find out."

Ronan recoils, but it's a delayed reaction, like he hadn't understood the danger that was creeping up on him where he'd thought he was safe. "Tear it up. _Burn_ it."

"I will if Adam asks me to."

"He isn't going to ask you to," Ronan spits. "He's fucking humiliated that you saw that, he made himself sick last night worrying because of _you_ and what you must _think_ of him now. If you tell him to call that bitch, _he will_."

"I'm not going to tell him to do anything," Gansey says. "But he ought to know he has the option."

"It's the same damn thing. You can't fucking speak without ordering people around, you've been doing it since you were sixteen and you don't even notice -- "

"Lynch." Blue's rare use of his last name cuts him off. "Thank you for sharing this with us. We all love Adam and we all want him to get through this, so go home and take care of him."

Ronan nods grimly.

"And make sure someone takes care of you, too."

The determination cracks. Behind it he just looks -- lost. "I don't need anything."

Blue pops up on her tiptoes and hooks one arm around Ronan's shoulder until she can pull him down and hoist herself up enough to kiss his cheek, a process she claims to find deeply irritating and only persists in doing only because Ronan claims to find it even more irritating. Neither of them looks irritated at the moment.

"Make sure someone takes care of you," she says again. "That _is_ an order."

Ronan still looks lost. He turns from her to Gansey as though Gansey might have an answer. He doesn't, so he says nothing, only lays a hand on Ronan's back. Ronan drops his head onto Gansey's shoulder but takes no relief from it, still strung tight with nerves.

-

Adam is out the entire day, but he returns to the office on Wednesday and works late to make up for the absence. He works hard the next day, too, but not so much more than usual that Gansey would have thought anything was wrong. It makes him wonder how many other times something was wrong and Adam was just able to hide it.

He's aware of the card in his wallet like it's a physical weight dragging him down. He almost gives it to Adam the first time he passes his office, but he experiences a crucial moment of doubt. Ronan is a man of strict principles, but that doesn't make him the sole arbiter of moral judgment. He certainly isn't right about questions of fact any more often than anyone else. But -- he is very often right about _Adam_, and Gansey cannot shake those words, _he made himself sick, because of you_. He decides to tell Adam over the weekend, away from the office, when he has time to process it.

He hopes it can wait that long.

Adam comes into Gansey's office Thursday, at the end of the day, or at least the end of Gansey's day. It's common, nay, expected for the attorneys to stay late into the night, but Blue speaks too derisively of that work culture for the idea to gain any real traction in his mind, and anyway, this isn't the kind of work Gansey loses himself in. It's something he knows, that he isn't going to stay at the firm much longer, but that he hasn't been thinking about yet.

So he's already prepared to leave when Adam knocks on the door. Adam doesn't look like he's heading out any time soon, but Gansey asks in vain hope, "Do you want to get dinner?"

Adam says, "I want my mother's phone number."

His hand, reaching to switch off his monitor, stops in mid-air and slowly lowers to the desk.

"I didn't think Ronan would tell you."

"He didn't."

"Then how did you..." Gansey suddenly loses faith in the word _know_, in the intention that it carries. The thought strikes him that he's talking to a sleepwalker.

"I should have thought to get it myself," Adam says. "Once I realized that, it was obvious that either you or Blue would have done it."

Gansey pulls his wallet out of his pocket, pulls the card out of his wallet. There's a heavy foreboding carried in each movement. If he believes this is the right thing, to let Adam make his choice, he also wishes that it weren't.

Adam takes the card when it's offered. He doesn't say another word. Gansey cannot manage the same.

"What are you going to do?"

Adam puts the card into his own wallet with slow, precise movements.

"It's a phone number. I'm going to call."

-

-

-

Ronan rarely answers his phone, which isn't as much of a deliberate choice as he lets people think. He ignores calls when he sees them come in, but since his phone is usually on silent or off or both, he doesn't get to decide to ignore a call very often.

Adam is, in this way, in all ways, the exception to Ronan's rules. Adam knows that Ronan hates talking on the phone, so if he calls it's for a good reason, and Ronan is usually willing to pick up.

If he notices.

His phone is off on Friday night when he starts to wonder why Adam isn't home yet. Friday nights are the nights that Adam pretends he isn't a workaholic; if he was going to stand Ronan up he'd at least have told him so.

Ronan has to hunt through the entire apartment before he finds his phone, under a dirty shirt on the bedroom floor, and when he turns it on there's a missed call from Adam and two text messages.

_I'm going to be home late tonight_  
_I'm getting dinner with my mother_

Ronan stares at his phone with his heart in his throat for -- too long, he doesn't even know, before he slams a thumb on the screen and lifts it to his ear. It rings for ten years, _this is Adam Parrish, please leave a message_, boring generic voicemail.

Ronan hangs up and calls again. Maybe Adam heard the ringing but couldn't get to his phone in time. Maybe he ignored it thinking it was a scam.

_This is Adam Parrish -- _

He hangs up. He can't think with Adam's voice in his ear. Where would Adam take his mother for dinner -- the trendy fusion place, that vegan monstrosity Sargent likes, the food court at the mall because she doesn't deserve anything better than soggy fries? Or somewhere he's never been before, somewhere none of the wait staff would recognize him if there's a scene, somewhere he won't have to remember her every time he goes back. Somewhere Ronan can't find him, because if Adam wanted him there he would have come back to the apartment first.

If he didn't want Ronan there, why did he call?

He tries to ignore the clawing sense of failure, or letting Adam down. It doesn't work.

His phone's still in his hand; he texts Gansey without any context _hey you know what FUCK YOU_. It doesn't make him feel better. He turns his phone off and then swears and turns it back on, spends the next hour scrambling after every alert. None of them are Adam.

He sits back down with his laptop and opens the rough cut on his current project. He's been taking more post-production gigs lately, cutting down his time on set. He stares and stares and stares at his screen, a single still frame, and eventually he hears the doorknob turn.

It occurs to him at the last second that Adam might have _brought her with him_. He resigns himself to doing or saying something terrible, but when the door swings open Adam is alone.

"Oh," Adam says, like he's surprised to come home to his boyfriend. "I wasn't sure you were here."

"It's Friday."

"Right. I knew that. I thought it was better..." He steps into the apartment and lets the door swing shut behind him, trailing off without finishing his sentence. Ronan can't imagine what in any of this is good enough to count as _better_.

_How did it go_ is a useless question.

"What happened?"

Adam steps out of his shoes and starts to fuss with his shirt cuffs. He's still made up for an executive meeting in an air conditioned office tower, even though it's nine o'clock and hotter than ass outside. Ronan runs out of patience for watching him fumble with buttons and steps close enough to yank his tie loose for him.

Adam goes alert like he hadn't known someone was there. He only lets his guard down a fraction when he sees it's Ronan.

He says, abruptly, "Cancer."

It's the part of this situation that Ronan cares the absolute least about, but clearly Adam had to say it. "Okay."

"It's stopped responding to treatment. They don't think he has...there isn't a lot of time. I -- "

He stops, for a tense unending moment, and then he abruptly drops whatever he'd been about to say. "I don't want to think about this anymore. I don't want to think." _Make me stop thinking_, and he isn't going to ask any clearer than that. He doesn't have to. Ronan hears him just fine.

"So don't think." Ronan kisses his neck, under his jaw, and feels Adam shiver. There's no pleasure in it. Ronan kisses lower on his neck, and then bites down, not hard enough to leave a mark, not where it would show, but hard enough that Adam twitches.

He unbuttons Adam's shirt and pushes it off his shoulders, lets it land tangled up in his jacket on the floor. He drops a hand down to his crotch and touches his cock through his pants. Adam exhales, fast, and doesn't inhale, bracing himself. Ronan undoes his belt and and pushes his pants and briefs down at the same time, stripping him efficiently.

"Shoes," he says, and Adam steps out of his shoes, leaves his clothes behind, naked except for his socks. "Those too. Off." Adam stands on one leg and then the other as he clumsily peels his socks off one at a time.

Ronan takes a few steps away, lets his eyes run obviously up and down Adam's body like he's deciding if he likes what he sees. He doesn't, actually: Adam isn't into this. He isn't _here_ with Ronan, but he isn't _down_ either, and he's still holding his breath. "Breathe."

Adam shuts his eyes and breathes in.

"Walk," and Adam takes the first step toward Ronan before he's opened his eyes. He follows Ronan into the bedroom and lets Ronan push him down onto the bed, lies motionless on his back while Ronan pins his hands over his head. His eyes are haunted and he's holding his breath again. Ronan has a feeling it's going to take a lot more than usual to get him where he wants to be.

Adam is shitty at enforcing his own boundaries at the best of times. This is not the best of times.

_Please don't let me fuck him up,_ a prayer to a God that Ronan usually hopes isn't paying attention to his bedroom.

"What did I tell you?"

Adam blinks at him, confused.

Ronan covers Adam's mouth and pinches his nose shut. Above his hand, Adam's eyes go wide.

"I told you to breathe," Ronan reminds him. "If you won't do it on your own, then you can do it when I say you can."

Adam blinks a few times, rapidly, and then turns his face away. It isn't enough to break Ronan's hold on him.

"Stop that," Ronan says, confident but not harsh. He doesn't sound like someone who's one second away from folding, but if Adam so much as twitches he's going to let him go and beg for forgiveness.

Adam freezes. He blinks again, and his eyes stay shut this time. He's completely still except for a tremor running through him, under his skin.

"Good." He doesn't elaborate on that. This moment is too fragile to support it.

There's a clock on the wall, the kind that needs winding instead of batteries, because that's the sort of thing that Gansey thinks makes a good housewarming gift, is an unnecessary appliance that comes with a chore. Ronan checks the second hand, looks back at Adam and counts thirty seconds off in his head. He checks the clock again, and fuck, it's only been twenty seconds. He needs to chill the fuck out. He needs to have more control than that.

At thirty seconds he moves his hand just enough that he can fit his mouth over Adam's and breathe for him.

Adam makes a noise into him, indescribable. Ronan pulls away and puts his hand back over his face.

Time ticks away. Ronan refuses to think past the next thirty seconds, and the next, and the next, just counts and waits and breathes for Adam. He doesn't think about what he's waiting for until Adam opens his eyes. There's no panic. There's no grief. There isn't even a question, _what are you going to do with me_, because he doesn't need to know what it is; he just needs Ronan to do it.

Ronan lifts his hand, leaving just one finger on Adam's lips. "Don't talk. Just nod. Got it?"

Adam nods.

He trails a hand slowly down Adam's body, like he's taking his time to brag that Adam isn't going anywhere. He doesn't want Adam to know his thoughts are racing. It would only break the spell, make him start worrying about why Ronan is worrying. Ronan needs to keep him in his body and out of his head. He needs something that will completely wreck Adam.

"Don't move."

He gets up from the bed and goes to the night stand. Adam follows him with his eyes, so Ronan doesn't let himself hesitate. They've talked about this trying this, after all. Adam agreed to it, even if he's wary for the same reason that Ronan is into it in the first place: neither of them has ever done this before. Ronan loves trying new shit with Adam. He loves knowing, in a jealous obsessive way, _no one else has ever had this and no one ever will_; the better part of him wants to learn anything and everything about Adam.

The practical part of him, which always sounds like Adam anyway, knows that there's no real stakes involved in experimenting, that the worst thing that could happen is bad sex that they laugh about later -- except tonight, if he fucks this up, he thinks he really could break something for real.

He sets the lube on the bed in easy reach of Adam and puts on a glove. "You know what I'm going to do with you?"

Adam nods.

He brushes a finger across Adam's forehead, latex against skin, down his cheek, stops with the tip resting on his lower lip. Adam looks up at him, breathing fast but completely still. Expectant.

"All you have to do it lie there and take it. You're going to be good."

Adam doesn't nod. It wasn't a question.

Ronan kneels on the bed and spreads Adam's legs where he wants them. He keeps a firm hold on one hip while he slides the first finger into Adam, slow and certain.

Adam sighs and lets his head roll back.

It's too easy to find a steady rhythm; Ronan makes sure to screw with it, push in a little too fast or pull all the way out or just stop suddenly. He watches Adam every second, catches every flicker of surprise or pleasure or excitement before his expression goes vacant again. He knows that Adam likes that escape, that quiet space where his brain shuts off and just lets him feel good; usually Ronan takes it as an accomplishment to get Adam like this.

Tonight he keeps seeing flashes of Adam blanked out for the wrong reasons, jumping three thousand miles away when he saw his mom, playing that moment again and again after it was already over, berating himself for not handling her ambush better. Ronan can't get out of his own head, but it doesn't matter, he doesn't need to. All he needs to do is take care of Adam, to slide four fingers now into him, to make him pant open-mouthed and rock forward to take more.

When he thinks he has Adam ready he gives himself one moment and rests his forehead on Adam's hip.

"You're doing good. You're going to be perfect." A trick: Ronan would never lie to Adam, and this can only be true if Ronan doesn't fuck up. So now he won't fuck up.

He spreads more lube over the glove and presses his thumb into his palm, and then he slowly works his hand into Adam. He can see it when Adam's eyes flutter open and then shut again, although he can't read the expression on his face. He keeps pushing in, consistent but _slow_, and Adam tilts his head up and whines in the back of his throat.

"Hey, you can do this." Ronan kisses the inside of his thigh. "You're doing great."

He's focusing so hard on Adam, every small noise and every little twitch, that he isn't really thinking about his own body until it suddenly hits him that _his entire hand is inside of Adam._

He thinks _yes_ and _shit_ and _oh, God_ and thirty other things at the same time, thoughts crashing into each other too loud to make sense. He's not sure how he got here. He not sure he ever will get here again so he better pay attention. He's not sure he deserves to be here, _fuck_, Adam let him reach inside of him. Adam let him in where he's vulnerable, where it would be so easy to hurt him. Ronan is overcome with that, with the heat and pressure and the heavy weight of Adam's trust surrounding him. He's breathing harder than Adam is, even, like he's the one carrying a burden here, but he can't get distracted, not _now_. He shakes his head once, trying to remember that he's the one in control, because otherwise he'd rub off on the mattress until he comes in his pants.

"Oh, _fuck,_ Adam."

Adam, of course, says nothing.

Ronan and curls his fingers up, an experiment.

"Ah!" The sound tears out of Adam, immediate and eager.

"Careful." Ronan fakes his best smartass attitude. "No talking."

Adam in his right mind would make a sarcastic comment about _ah_ not being a word. Adam spread out before Ronan says nothing.

Ronan rotates his hand, curious, and Adam bites his lip hard as he moans.

"That's good. You're doing so fucking good."

Adam's knees twitch in, like he's trying to pull Ronan in deeper, so Ronan gives him more. He keeps working inside Adam, feels a thrill every time he makes Adam gasp or curl his toes or push down onto his hand asking for more, but most of all he's happy to see the look on his face, total exhilaration with no room for anything else. It turns out shoving a hand up a guy's ass is a good way to get his undivided attention, go figure.

He wants to push it that last bit further, though, to absolutely break Adam with pleasure, so he shifts up the mattress and takes the head of Adam's cock into his mouth.

Adam tenses up all over, quivering. He makes a sound that's almost confused, like there's too much sensation to process. Ronan reaches up with his free hand, places it by his side, lightly draws a slow line back and forth with his thumb. One long soft _oh_ falls out from Adam's open mouth, and then he melts into the bed, floating and loose as Ronan sucks him off and rocks his hand inside of him.

Adam clenches around Ronan's hand when he comes. It feels like an act of possession, Adam laying claim to the part of Ronan that's inside of him, and Ronan has to rest his forehead on his hip for a long moment before he's willing to give that up and pull out.

Adam stretches out along the bed. He looks used. He looks like he's been pushed far enough already, but Ronan _needs_, sudden and sharp. He fumbles his pants open and gets on hands and knees over him. Adam blinks his eyes open, focuses on Ronan expectantly, waiting for whatever new demand Ronan will make of him.

Ronan kisses him, hard. He grabs Adam's wrists where they're still crossed over his head, but that isn't right, and he scrambles to take one of Adam's hands in his, palm hot against palm like there's a sun trapped between them, fingers interlacing.

Adam makes a _hm_ sound against Ronan's lips, low and lazy, and he gently squeezes Ronan's hand.

"Shit," Ronan hisses as his heart skips several beats in a row, "shit, shit," and he jerks off fast onto Adam's stomach.

Adam crashes after that. Ronan crashes next to him for a minute, then rolls out of bed to grab a damp hand towel from the bathroom. Adam barely stirs while Ronan cleans him up, just giving one sleepy _hm?_ that Ronan doesn't answer. He tosses the used towel into the shower so it won't drip anywhere, comes back into the room -- and there's Adam on the bed, falling asleep, and that's _good_, that's a good thing, but Ronan still has an impulse to wake him up, _wait, please, talk to me, be here with me._

Instead he lies down with his face against the back of Adam's neck, an arm over his stomach, a leg tangled between his, and they fall asleep like that, as close as Ronan can make them.

When he wakes up in the morning Adam has rolled away from him. Ronan watches across the bed as Adam's breathing changes and the muscles start to shift minutely under his skin. He's expecting it when Adam rolls onto his back, eyes blinking open and slowly coming to focus on Ronan's face, but he doesn't feel ready for it at all.

Adam says, "morning."

Ronan nods.

Adam rubs at his eyes. He looks too tired to have just woken up. That doesn't stop him from sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, to get up, to start his day, to leave Ronan behind.

Any time they try something new Adam makes them _talk_ about it afterwards, even though he sucks at talking about sex. Ronan always thinks it would be a relief to skip that step, except now apparently they are skipping it, and it's not a relief at all.

"Was that okay?" Ronan asks.

Adam turns back to look at him, a flicker of surprise over the exhaustion and distress. "Yeah." Some of his relief must show, because Adam reaches for him, brushes a thumb along the side of his face. "Yeah, of course."

Ronan surges forward and kisses him. The desperation doesn't ease when Adam kisses back. They separate and find each other and separate over and over again, short clumsy kisses, like they can't stick together but keep trying.

Adam runs his hand down Ronan's side, slides it under the waistband of his boxers and wraps his fingers around his cock. Ronan gets his own hand around Adam, awkward because it's his left hand, and they jerk each other off intense and artless like it's their first time.

Adam lays out on his back. Ronan, not sure how close he's allowed to be, stays on his side of the bed.

Adam says, "I'm going to Virginia."

Ronan shuts his eyes.

"Let me come with you." He scrapes the words out from deep within him, like he's spending every ounce of good will he's earned in this relationship.

Adam stares up at the ceiling. He doesn't acknowledge Ronan's offering. He doesn't even acknowledge that Ronan spoke. He opens his mouth, and Ronan is shaking, because he already knows that Adam is going to say _no_.

"Please," Ronan adds.

Adam says "okay," and Ronan shuts his eyes, weak with gratitude.

-

Adam's hometown doesn't have much in the way of a hospitality industry, which Ronan discovers outside the airport when he asks Adam where he's driving to and gets back nothing but a blank look.

Adam bought their plane tickets and booked a rental car and informed his employers he was taking family leave and spent a day wrapping up urgent matters in his active cases, and he forgot to find a place to stay.

And why wouldn't he? Why is Ronan surprised, except that Adam had insisted on making the arrangements, he always makes the arrangements, _Lynch, or don't you remember the time you got us stranded in San Bernardino_, and he never forgets anything.

He doesn't fix it, either, just stares at Ronan and then out the windshield. Ronan hates that so much he pulls Adam's phone out of the cup holder in the center console, tries to yelp hotels in a place he's never been to that's still an hour away. The first thing he finds is a B&B, and he doesn't like the sound of that -- too personal, too attentive -- but again, he's yelping hotels on a cell phone while his boyfriend stares catatonic out the windshield, so he hits their phone number and asks if they have a room. They do.

It's late by the time they check in. "You can take the first shower," Ronan says, more of a suggestion than an offer. Adam showers and then Ronan takes his turn, comes back into the bedroom to find Adam sitting in an armchair in a corner of the room, looking out the window. The manager had told them this was the room with the best view. At night, with the lights on, there's nothing to see.

"I'm going to hit the lights." Another suggestion, but this time Adam just nods and stays in the chair.

It's a long time falling asleep, alone. Ronan wakes up in the middle of the night, rolls over to check that Adam is sitting in the arm chair instead of out wandering the night. He's still there. Ronan almost wishes he weren't.

Adam is gone the next time Ronan wakes up, but it's seven o'clock and the manager told them breakfast could be ready as early as six, so he wanders down the hall. Adam is in the dining room, still wearing the pajamas he didn't sleep in. It ought to look casual, but it doesn't; Adam's whole bearing is formal, posture painfully upright, too rigid for a room with baby blue wallpaper.

"Morning."

There's a pot of coffee on the table; Ronan pours himself a cup and resists the urge to take the whole pot. "How's the food?"

"Good. The bacon's crispy," although there's still three strips on his plate, so he can't have eaten very much of it.

Ronan swipes a piece. "What's the plan for today?" he asks, neutral, and hopes the answer will be _driving back to the airport_.

"Visiting hours start at eight." That part Adam hadn't forgotten to take care of. And of course he wants to be there as soon as he can; putting it off would only be more time trapped in limbo, and normally Ronan would approve of rushing headlong at a problem. But this is going to hurt either way, and putting it off would mean there was a possibility of avoiding it forever.

"Am I going with you?" He takes a sip of coffee as soon as he's doing talking, like he's not invested in the answer.

"No."

"Okay."

Adam isn't looking at him, and Ronan is trying not to react, but he keeps explaining anyway. "I don't want you to know him. I don't want him to know you."

Ronan sets his mug down. "Okay," he says, exactly the same as the first time.

Adam pours himself a cup of coffee that he doesn't drink. He keeps his eyes low. Ronan finishes off his abandoned breakfast and wishes he'd kept his mouth shut.

They make it back to the room okay, and then Adam opens his suitcase and freezes.

Ronan knows that thinking-too-hard paralysis too well. He can practically read Adam's thoughts: _am I trying to impress him or do I act like I don't care about his opinion, but I shouldn't care about his opinion but I do so I don't deserve to act like I don't -- _

"You're not getting dressed up for that sack of shit." He grabs out a t-shirt and jeans and shoves them at him.

Adam's arms close around them slowly.

"You must think I'm -- "

He stops himself before Ronan can figure what he was going to say, but there was no good way for that sentence to end.

"You're the strongest person I know," he tells Adam.

"Liar."

"No," Ronan says. "I'm not."

Adam meets his eyes for a second before looking back down at the clothes held to his chest. "No. I know you're not." He turns around and starts to undress, dropping the conversation before it can force him to connect those two statements.

Ronan unties one of his leather bracelets while Adam changes, takes his hand once he's dressed and ties the strap around Adam's wrist. He can't go with Adam, but damned if he'll let Adam go without some piece of him to hold on to.

-

Ronan drops Adam off at the hospital and returns to the B&B. He walks around the block for half an hour before it occurs to him that he could try _doing_ something. Read a book. Shower off the heat of the day, already unbearable at nine in the morning. Reply to any of the emails Cheng's sent him in the last month, _stop sending me script coverage I'm not a fucking producer_. Fine tune his current project.

He keeps walking, cell phone in hand.

It never rings. He rounds the corner on the block for the thousandth time and sees Adam standing in front of the B&B.

"You could have called me. I would have picked you up." He hadn't offered; he thought that was obvious.

"I managed." Adam stares up at the B&B, confused, like now that he's here he doesn't know why he came.

"Are you hungry? We could get lunch."

Adam shrugs, not a _no_, which is apparently the best Ronan will get from him. He leads Adam to the car and drives, picks a restaurant at random when Adam doesn't answer his question about what he wants to eat. Adam doesn't offer any opinions on what kind of pizza he wants, either. Ronan orders his favorite toppings, but the food doesn't tempt him; he spends more time picking at the crust, gouging little pieces of dough out of it, than he does eating.

"He looks smaller than I remember," Adam says abruptly.

Ronan doesn't know how he's supposed to react to that. Ronan doesn't know if he is supposed to react to that. "He had chemo and shit, right?"

Adam shrugs. That's not what he meant. He takes a second slice of pizza even though his first one is sitting mostly uneaten on his plate.

"Did he apologize?"

Adam picks a piece of pepperoni off his new slice of pizza. "I didn't really ask him to," he admits.

"You shouldn't have to _ask_," Ronan says. "He should be begging you to let him apologize."

"He doesn't see it like that."

"Don't make excuses for him."

"I'm not. It's just a fact," Adam says. "They didn't want me. They couldn't afford me. They did the best they could but I was too needy. I was strange and ungrateful and I took up too much space -- "

"That's just being a kid," Ronan says. "Kids _need shit_."

The corner of Adam's mouth turns down. "You asked me a question and I'm answering it."

"So what the hell _does_ he have to say for himself?"

"You won't like it."

No shit. Ronan already doesn't like it; Ronan doesn't like any of this. "So? You tell me shit I don't like all the time."

"Maybe I shouldn't."

"No," Ronan says, "you should."

Adam starts to lift his slice up but then grimaces and lowers it again, like he can't make himself eat even if it would get him out of talking.

"He said I should thank him," Adam says.

Ronan doesn't realize that he's clenched his hand into a fist until he sees Adam look at it and then look away. He moves it under the table, out of sight. He can't actually get the fist to open.

"Why. The fuck. Would you _thank_ him."

Adam's shoulders tense up. He's bracing himself, but not against that poison -- against Ronan's fury. "Because he made me tough, instead of a wimp. He prepared me for the world." Adam toys with a napkin that's laying half-crumpled on the table, smoothing it out, but that only makes it more of a mess. "He made me who I am."

Ronan tries to swallow down his anger. He does. But there's too much, and he chokes on it. The anger knows it belongs here. It knows that the only possible response to this is all-consuming rage.

"That fucking _bastard_." Adam doesn't even react this time, and Ronan wishes he would; wishes he'd snap at Ronan for making a scene, tell him that he's not helping, criticize his profanity, do _anything_ except just sit there. "He's lying to make himself feel better. You know that's not true, right?"

Adam says, "sure," in an easy offhand way that freezes Ronan's blood.

"Don't tell me you're listening to that garbage."

Adam shrugs. "Well, he's right, isn't he? You can call it blame instead of credit, but I wouldn't be the person I am without what he did to me. I can't even imagine what that person would be like. Would I have worked so hard to get away from here? Would I have left this town? Would I have met you?"

"You can write science fiction all day, your dad didn't _help you_ by _beating you,_" Ronan snarls. "_You_ did all of that shit, on your own, because you're incredible."

"Ronan, if you do that thing you do right now I'm going to scream."

_That thing I do, what, remind you that someone loves you, say that you're worth something, treat you like a human instead of a punching bag_ \--

"They get to tell you what they think about you," Ronan says over the deafening pounding in his ears. "Why don't I?"

"That's what this place _is_. This is a place that hurts. You can't change that."

"I can try."

"No, you can't." There's actual emotion in his voice now: anger, because _can't_ doesn't mean _impossible,_ it means _not allowed_.

"Why not?" Ronan asks. "Why does it have to hurt?"

Adam hurls the answer back too quickly for it to be anything but pure unfiltered truth. "If it stops hurting now then I could have stopped it from hurting all along and that makes it my fault that I wasn't okay."

There isn't even anger inside of Ronan anymore. It would be nicer if there were.

Ronan says, hoarse, "I am really fucking scared that you don't hear how that's bullshit."

Adam presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I wish I'd left you in LA."

That hurts. It's supposed to.

"Too fucking bad. Eat your stupid pizza."

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't give a shit."

Adam manages half a slice. He doesn't look at Ronan once.

-

Adam hasn't slept well in two weeks, not since the night he came home from work shaking, _I told the receptionist to take a message, I couldn't talk to her, I couldn't, I can't_. He does at least come to bed tonight, although he doesn't try to sleep. He sits upright against the headboard, staring at a book without turning the pages. Ronan presses up against his leg and tries to ignore the light from the bedside lamp.

He must've fallen asleep eventually, because Adam is shaking his shoulder. "Ronan. Ronan, wake up."

"Huh?" The light is off. Did Adam catch some sleep after all? He's still sitting up. Had he abandoned the book to sit in the dark? Why had Ronan left him alone? "What?"

"I'm sorry," Adam says. "I shouldn't have said that about leaving you in LA."

"No, you shouldn't've." Ronan props himself up on one elbow and squints at Adam, even though it's too dark to make out his expression. Ronan has standing permission to wake Adam up for any reason whatsoever as long as he doesn't have an early morning the next day; Adam has the same permission, because fair's fair, but he's never actually done it before. "Did you wake me up just to apologize?"

Adam doesn't answer, and he keeps not answering. Ronan waits. His shoulder starts to bitch at him; he ignores it.

"Ronan," Adam says. "What if I'm crazy?"

"You're not crazy."

"I want to be in pain. That's an insane thing to want."

"It's fucked up," Ronan says, because Adam has a hard time hearing positive words even when they're true. Lying to him to make him feel better is worse than useless. "It doesn't make you crazy."

"Maybe I just fake being sane really well."

"If you act sane then you are sane, it's like -- whatever, that fucking French thing."

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness a little, but he can't tell if Adam is actually making the scrunched up confused _what the fuck is my boyfriend talking about_ face that he loves so much, or if he's only seeing it because he wants to. "What French thing?"

"I don't know, some bullshit some philosopher said."

"Descartes?"

"Not him. The one that hates people."

Adam says "that doesn't narrow it down," which ought to be funny, but he doesn't say it like it's a joke. Ronan is wide awake in the small hours of the morning under a paisley duvet in a bed and breakfast in rural Virginia while his boyfriend drifts painfully out of reach and he's being held hostage to wakefulness by a conversation about _French philosophy_; it has to be a bizarre punishment for some unspecified sin.

"Hell is other people," Ronan says, "that guy."

"Sartre," Adam supplies absentmindedly. "When did you read Sartre?"

"Driving home from school for Easter junior year. It was that or talk to Declan."

"_Existence precedes essence_ still implies that it's possible to create meaning. That everything doesn't just stay meaningless."

"Everything isn't meaningless, it's just feels that way because it's the middle of the fucking night. Nothing means shit in the middle of the night."

"So this isn't real."

Ronan sighs, louder than he should have. Adam's mind always moves fast, but he can usually track where it's going better than this. He's not sure if that's something about where Adam is at or if it's that he just woke up, but one of them isn't thinking clearly. "If you wanna say this isn't real, sure."

Adam lies down, curled the slightest bit toward him. Ronan lies back down on his side. Their faces are inches apart, the space between them charged and heavy like a confessional.

"I don't want you to be in LA," Adam whispers. "I want you to be here."

"Good, 'cause I am."

"It isn't good. I should be able to do this on my own, and now I'll never know if I could have."

"Yeah, but you're never going to have to go through this again," and if Robert Parrish manages some kind of miraculous eleventh hour recovery, Ronan thinks he will actually snap, promises be damned. "So what does it matter?"

Adam shuts his eyes and doesn't answer. Ronan starts to wonder if he fell asleep. Starts to be glad for that.

"Do you think I'm okay?" Adam asks, so quiet that Ronan would think he imagined it except that his eyes have opened again, tiny spots of light in the dark. "Do you think I've done all right?"

There's nothing in particular he's referring to. It isn't like Adam to be imprecise, so if he isn't talking about anything than he has to mean -- everything, coming back home and leaving home and surviving home. Adam isn't just going to allow him to say what he wanted to say earlier, he's _asking him to_.

Because after all, this isn't real.

"Yeah," Ronan says, the words too soft to break. "You're better than okay. You're a good person and you did that on your own."

Adam is quiet for a very long time before he says, "maybe you're right."

-

Adam goes to see his dad the next morning, right at the start of visiting hours. Ronan drops him off at the hospital, gets out of the car to kiss him goodbye. He wants to stop Adam from going even worse than he had the first day.

"Call me when you're done? I'll pick up."

Adam nods. It's not very reassuring.

He watches Adam walk inside, and it's no good; he has so much energy running through him that he feels like he's hit by lightning, except it isn't over in a flash. It just keeps going on and on and on, crackling under his skin, boiling him down to bones. He tries to get back into the car, and he can't even sit down long enough to start the engine. He knows driving will help, anything would help, anything would be better than this, except he can't make himself do it.

He gets into the car and back out of it three times before he slams the door shut and storms off down the curb. He shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again he's pulled his phone out of his pocket.

He texts Sargent _this sucks_

It's five in the morning in LA, but she responds in seconds.

_Yeah but you suck harder_  
_So it's fine_

_that's not how sucking works_

_Yeah no not sorry that I'm not an expert at sucking like you are_

He huffs. Some of the electricity trickles out of him.

Except now he's thinking about the last time he talked to Sargent, the last time he sent a text message to anyone.

_hey_  
_someone needs to do something nice for dick_  
_and I'm busy_  
_so get on that_

_Let me get this straight_  
_You want me to do your apology to my boyfriend for you_

_it can just be a handy or something_  
_don't inconvenience yourself on my account_

_Oh, no trouble at all, I LOOOOVE to help you_  
_Really, ANYTHING you need, just ask and I'll drop EVERYTHING, just for YOU_

The thunderclouds roll a little further down the horizon.

_I know what sarcasm is, asshole_

_Yeah,_ Sargent texts back, _so do I_

He walks back to the car and drops into the driver's seat. This time he can actually start the engine.

He drives around town with no real goal. Some of the places are familiar from things Adam has said, the mechanic's shop and the high school and the factory. He takes the rental all the way out to the trailer park. There's no telling which one Adam grew up in. There's no real difference between any of them. He drives back into town.

He doesn't hate Henrietta. He always figured he would. But he only has to go one block off the main drag before he finds quiet, and he can get the rental up past a hundred on the empty country highways, and there isn't a single billboard For His Consideration anywhere. He could see himself here.

He can't see Adam anywhere.

Adam does call him, and he does pick up him up at the hospital. He drives the long way to the B&B just to have something to do, and when he looks over at a red light Adam is asleep. He passes the B&B and keeps driving.

Outside of town, there's a field full of absolutely nothing; Ronan pulls off the road and kills the engine. Adam doesn't stir. He walks around the car and carefully opens the passenger door so he can unbuckle Adam's seat belt and lean the seat back. Then he sits on the hood of the car at throws rocks at a decaying wood fence that hasn't kept anyone from going anywhere in a couple of decades. That gets boring. He lies on the hood and watches clouds go by.

After a long, long time, Adam comes and sits on the hood next to him. He puts his feet up on the car, arms hugging his knees to his chest. Ronan wraps a hand around his ankle.

-

Adam's dad is seeing a doctor the next morning; Adam says he might visit in the afternoon, depending on how that goes. His voice is totally flat.

Ronan hopes the nurses will tell Adam that Robert isn't up to visitors, that he got rushed to the ER, that he's dead, so he doesn't leave the hospital after Adam disappears inside of it. He ditches the car in the parking lot and slinks back to main entrance, prepared to pace back and forth for a minute or an hour or the rest of the day.

Except he comes to a dead halt ten feet away from the entrance, because while he was parking, Adam's mom arrived.

He hasn't seen her since that night in LA. She'd caught a flight back the morning after her dinner with Adam, so they hadn't all had to _travel_ together, thank fuck. He doesn't know what he would have done stuck on an airplane with her. He doesn't know what he's going to do _now_.

She spots him at the same moment he spots her. She doesn't have the decency to look away or try to hide. There's something eating at her and she's making up her mind about how nasty she's going to be when she lets it out. Ronan hates that he knows that; Adam twists the corner of his mouth the same way.

"You just going to stand there all day?" is what she goes with.

"What," Ronan spits, "you think I want to _talk_ to you?"

"You could leave," she suggests. "Better for your eyes than gawking."

"Don't pretend you care. You didn't know I existed a week ago."

"Wouldn't've pictured he'd have someone like you," she agrees, breezy in a way that turns his stomach inside out.

"You don't know anything about him."

"But you know me, is that it? I can see you judging me. You don't know anything."

"I know what you two did to him."

"Is that how he tells it?" she asks, like she isn't interested in an answer. "He makes it sound like any of us had it easy? Three people in that little trailer, never any space, any quiet, never enough of anything. Robert'd work all day and come home and there's the kid getting in the way again, making trouble, telling lies...anyone could lose their temper. I did my best to keep Adam out of the way, but I'm just one woman. He never did learn to listen to someone who knows better."

"Yeah, I'm sure it would have been really convenient for you if he'd just made himself stop existing," Ronan spits. "It would have been pretty great for him if that shitbag had gone to _jail_."

"Right," she says. "He goes off the jail. Makes a dollar a day. Gets out with a record and now no one'll hire him. Now there's _no_ money coming in, all on account of a couple of bruises, that would've been better for Adam?"

"Having nothing would have been better for Adam than having you."

She shakes her head, unfazed. "That right there tells me you've never had nothing."

"If you were such a great fucking mom you could've taken him and _left_."

She doesn't answer right away. Ronan doesn't want to give her any space to feel comfortable in, to come up with these lies, but he can't force any more words out. His whole mind is one blaring siren, lights and sound, _emergency emergency emergency_.

"You think you're gonna marry my boy?"

"Yes." He never figured he'd say that with so much hate. He never figured she'd be the first person to ask.

"You think he's perfect?"

Ronan clenches his jaw. Adam is a stubborn control freak with a temper and intimacy issues a mile wide. Ronan knows that, and he doesn't care; he doesn't need Adam to be perfect.

But he's not going to say that to _her_. Adam is a _god_ compared to her. She should be walking door to door proselytizing for him. She should be proud of him.

"You know what marriage is?" she asks. "It's picking a man and saying, I choose this one, even though he's not perfect. If you can't stay with him when he makes a mistake then you don't marry him."

Everything stops.

He can't speak. He can't move. Every living part of him is blasted away by a scalding wave of outrage. His vision blurs out and Adam's mom fades out of existence -- and then it slams back into place, everything too sharp against his eyes, and she's _still there_.

He wants her to stop talking. He wants to strangle her so she has to stop talking. He wants to drag her through the streets while people throw things and scream her sins at her. He wants her to _admit that she did something wrong_. He understands, in a sudden, terrible way, why Adam doesn't expect his father to apologize, and he's shaking with all of the things he's not doing.

"You had to make a choice." His voice is harsh in his own ears, but she just looks bored with him. "And you picked the wrong one."

Ronan can't stay here, he can't, not without doing something unforgivable. But he can't stand the thought that Adam will step outside and he won't be here and _she will_. He heads back inside the hospital and stalks through every hall and room that's open to the public. He doesn't notice he's getting nervous looks until a nurse tells him that there's no point trying anything, the good drugs are all locked up. He slinks off to hide in a men's room and stick his head in a sink. It doesn't cool him down at all.

He grabs Adam out of the waiting room before Adam's even had a chance to call him. There's no sign of his mom when they leave. That doesn't make Ronan feel any better. It just means that he doesn't know where she is, that she could pop back up at any time, a roach scurrying out from under the cupboards.

He drives Adam straight back to the B&B. Adam sits down on the bed in their room and slowly unlaces his shoes. Ronan rips his shirt off and throws it in a corner. He's too sweaty; he needs another fucking shower, he needs it to never be summer again, he needs the oceans to just fucking rise and wipe out this stupid continent already, what are they fucking waiting for --

"Is something wrong?"

Ronan freezes. How obvious is he being if _Adam_ can tell he's upset, through that fog that's hovering around him? Too obvious. Adam doesn't need this on his shoulders. But Ronan's blown it, so now he's going to have to tell him something. Maybe he can downplay it. 

"Your mom tried to give me relationship advice." That was pretty good. He sounded annoyed, not homicidal.

Adam looks satisfied with that answer. In fact he looks kind of _amused_, a faint flicker of humor, like for the first time in days he isn't hollow. Holy shit, he's _smiling_, and Ronan doesn't care that it's the tiniest goddamn smile he's ever seen, it's beautiful.

"How did it even come up?" Adam asks. "Since when do you talk to people?"

An unexpected rush of relief sweeps over him. This is a conversation he knows how to have. This is his Adam. "I can talk, I'm not feral," he says, with as much disdain as he can force out when all he really wants to say is _oh thank God_. "Maybe we were bonding."

"_Bonding._"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I want my boyfriend's mom to like me?"

Adam is smiling, he's smiling, and then he breathes in fast and his face crumbles.

"Uh." Ronan flails uselessly, caught in a moment that doesn't exist anymore.

Adam's hand flies up to cover his mouth. He turns away and curls in on himself like he's in pain.

Ronan finally manages to move, falls onto the bed next to him. Adam shakes his head, _no, no, no_, still facing away from him.

"Fuck, no, don't do that -- shit, I'm sorry, just -- please, please let me -- " Ronan puts a hand on his back.

Adam holds himself apart for one more second. Then he collapses, down and in, his forehead crashing into Ronan's chest hard enough it hurts. Ronan wraps his arms around his back and pulls him in closer. Adam hides his face, like if no one sees this then it isn't happening.

Ronan doesn't shut up the entire time, "I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, I was just running my mouth, shit, I'm sorry I said anything, I didn't mean anything, fuck -- "

Adam is completely silent. That's the worst part. He's breathing, barely, tiny and shallow and spaced too far apart, nothing Ronan would even notice if he were a foot away, if he couldn't feel his chest rise and fall. There isn't any other sound. Adam is quiet and controlled and careful, the way you'd have to be if the person who made you cry was just on the other side of the door.

So Ronan keeps babbling, trying to cover that awful damning silence, "I'm sorry, fuck, fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, you don't deserve that, you don't deserve this."

After a minute or two Adam falls still, and Ronan does too, biting his tongue. Adam turns his face, not enough to be seen, just enough that Ronan can make out his words.

"Can you. Talk?"

"Yeah, of course, yeah. About what?"

His shoulders shrug up one miserable inch. "Gansey. Hollywood. Reading Sartre in the car, just -- " _not this_.

"Okay," Ronan says, "okay, junior year, that was the year Gansey tried to grow a mustache," and he just keeps talking about every damn thing he can think of, even after he knows Adam has fallen asleep. Maybe he's still listening. Ronan would rather he dream about boarding school or WeHo or Cork County than _this_.

His throat's gone dry and his voice is hoarse by the time he hears himself say "I choose you, and I'm staying with you, no matter what. If there was any mistake you could make that would make me leave then you wouldn't be you. If you ever hit our kids I'll take them and disappear and you'll never see any of us again, but I know that won't happen because I know you and you'd never do that, I know you, I pick you."

Adam sleeps on.

-

They wake up, fully clothed on top of the covers, when Adam's alarm goes off the next morning, which means Adam got something like sixteen hours of sleep. He looks like needs another sixteen. He's gone blank and far away again; Ronan wants to pin him to the bed, _make_ Adam look at him, whisper in his ear _come back to me_ \-- but they don't have time. They have an appointment.

Adam hadn't really told him who they were meeting, and Ronan can't really pay attention; _this_ part of the hospital, the office part, trips him up worse than the patient part. They had a lot of quiet meetings in depressing little rooms like this after his mom's diagnosis, only then the tactful sneaky words were all _home care_ and _monitoring_ and _slowing the deterioration_, and this time they're _hospice_ and _pain management_ and _end of life planning_. Ronan tunes it out and watches Adam. His face is politely vacant while he listens and asks questions. You could think he was bored if you didn't know better. He and his mom have the same circles, under the same eyes.

Ronan's shoulders tighten, and he goes on alert before he's really processed what he's reacting to -- tension crossing Adam's face, eyebrows pulling together and his skin going pale.

Ronan tunes back in to find out what's going on, to jump in and fight for Adam, but the words going around are more hospital gibberish, _sliding scale_ and _insurance coverage_. Fuck, dying is expensive. He's glad that he never did murder Adam's father. Why save him all that money?

Adam's mom says, "we can't afford that."

The hospital guy goes on again, some shit about payment plans, but Adam isn't listening anymore. Adam is staring at the bracelet Ronan tied on him, the bracelet he's still wearing three days later. His eyes are fixed on it when he breaks back into the conversation.

"Dad didn't want to see me, did he?"

His mom doesn't respond. She looks thrown by the abrupt subject change.

"This was never about closure. I made this so much more complicated than it was supposed to be." Adam shakes his head with a smile, a small, horrible expression that shreds Ronan's soul. "Of course I did."

He stands up from the chair, which breaks the moment enough that his mom can pull some words together. "Your father has a right to see you -- "

"And now he has." Adam pulls a check book out of his bag, signs, and tears the check off. "There. You can write any number you want on that, and then we're done."

He holds it out to her. She doesn't move.

"Take it." His voice would be too quiet to hear if the room hadn't gone silent. It's cold the way that acid is cold, just before your skin starts to burn. "You owe me that much."

Her face is red. She takes the check.

"Come on," he says, slinging his bag over his shoulder, "we're going," and he's out the door before he's even looked to see if Ronan is following him.

-

-

-

There's a hundred little details they have to take care of before they can leave, but that's fine. Adam is good at taking care of little details.

He compares available flights; not an appealing selection, but he can make due. "We're gonna get stuck with a layover," he tells Ronan, who's been hovering in the bedroom doorway the whole time Adam was on his laptop.

"Okay." There's something off in Ronan's voice.

"Do you mind?"

"I don't give a shit about layovers."

Adam shrugs and buys the tickets. If Ronan wants to be in a mood then he'll let him be in a mood.

He packs, checks under the bed and in the bathtub and on the windowsill, because Ronan's shit has a way of ending up in weird places. He speaks with the manager while Ronan carries their luggage out. She doesn't charge them for an extra night, even though it's past check out time. Adam tips well, if awkwardly. He never knows how much to tip for things like hotels.

"You mind driving?" he asks, an attempt at a joke. Ronan always wants to drive. But Ronan doesn't look amused, or even glad for the offer. He just nods curtly and gets into the car.

More details: a gas station to fill up the rental car before they return it; a shuttle to the airport; another awkward tip for the shuttle driver. It takes barely any time at all to get through security, in the afternoon, in this tiny airport. It's a nice break.

As soon as their plane is in the air Adam pays the extortionate fee for the wifi and starts to triage his inbox. He hadn't opened his laptop once the whole trip. What was he thinking? He has so much to catch up on.

There's several emails from Gansey. They aren't on any cases together. Adam classifies them as non-urgent and leaves them for later.

He looks up at one point and catches Ronan watching him. He's hard to ignore after that. Adam long ago decided to consider that part of Ronan's charm, how hard he is to ignore, because the alternative was losing his mind. It's less charming when he's still watching Adam, several emails later.

"You gonna put on a movie or something, Lynch?"

"No."

Definitely in a mood. Adam rolls his eyes and goes back to work.

Their layover's two hours. Ronan buys them six-dollar-a-slice pizza for whatever meal exists outside of time, but that only kills twenty minutes. Adam leaves Ronan with their bags while he goes to the bathroom, walks the long way back through the terminal and passes a bookstore. He picks up one of those paperbacks that exists to be picked up in airport bookstores, a dead body on the first page and two shootouts for every sex scene. He buys it, and when Ronan goes back to staring at him he tosses the book at him.

"It's like traveling with a toddler," Adam complains. "Entertain yourself."

Ronan scowls and flips to the last chapter to find out who the killer is.

Adam's still going through his email on the second plane. He has a new message from Gansey. He reaches for his water bottle and realizes it's empty. A dull headache settled over him at some point. It must be the change in altitude. Nothing he can do about it but ignore it. He needs to find another expert for the Chamberlain case. Does no one do background checks on these people? He destroyed the witness's credibility without leaving the first page of Google results.

They take a cab home. Adam hadn't wanted to leave a car in long term parking, not that the cab ride is cheap either. Another tip; Adam gives the driver the last of his cash and hopes that covers it. He's having trouble working out the math.

He heads straight for the bedroom to unpack, like he normally does when he gets home from a trip. Ronan hovers in the doorway, not doing much of anything, which isn't normal. Adam doesn't know what it is.

"You want to order something for dinner?" Ronan asks like it's a weighted question, only Adam can't figure out what's heavy about it.

"Are you hungry?" he asks back, although come to think of it, it has been a while since six dollar pizza in Dallas. "Sure."

"What do you want?"

What's even open right now? Adam should know that. His headache hasn't gotten better. The hunger isn't helping, and that's a circular problem; he can't think because he hasn't eaten, but he can't eat if he doesn't think.

"Can you just pick something?" he asks.

"Okay," Ronan says, uncharacteristically agreeable.

Adam unzips his luggage. He'd never actually unpacked at the B&B, just pulled things out of the bag as he needed them. The dirty clothes are all mixed in with the clean ones. He might as well throw everything in the laundry. He grabs one big armful and dumps it all in the hamper.

He looks back at the suitcase and notices that he missed something. There's a pair of socks lying in the suitcase, still paired, unworn. He hadn't needed them. He'd packed so much more than he ended up needing, like he thought -- when he packed he thought -- he'd be staying -- he thought he'd stay -- longer --

His hand tightens around the socks as he processes the fact that _he just paid his parents a fortune to disown him_.

"Shit," Ronan says grimly, "there it is."

Adam can't respond. Adam can't _breathe_. His chest hurts too much for that. He pulls his hands close, some instinct telling him to curl in, protect his weak spots, except he's still holding those fucking socks and now he's shaking.

A spot of warmth on his back, another a second later; Ronan touches Adam and pulls him in close, so much more contact than Adam can handle right now, except at least this way Ronan isn't _looking_ at him. Ronan has already seen too much. Ronan watched Adam humiliate his mother, watched Adam send his father off to his death without so much as a _goodbye_, how could he do that, what was he thinking, who the hell is he --

"Are you okay?" Ronan asks, keeps asking, "are you okay, are you okay?"

If Adam could stand to look at Ronan, if Adam could do anything, he'd glare. He's having a panic attack over a pair of socks, how does Ronan _think_ he's doing?

"Are you okay," Ronan murmurs, low, except the words rearrange themselves in Adam's head and this time he hears them the right way around, _you are okay, you are okay, you're okay_. A statement of fact, not a question.

He gasps and then exhales with a shudder. His hands fall limp to his sides. He drops the socks.

It's several minutes before he can really breathe again, before he's pulled together enough to stand on his own. He leans back. Ronan's hands slide down to the small of his back, allowing the space between them without breaking contact. His eyes are fixed on Adam, but now that thought doesn't send his heart rate spiking up. Ronan has already seen every last part of Adam, even the parts that Adam didn't know were there. Ronan has seen everything Adam is capable of, and he keeps sticking around.

So Adam looks back at him and doesn't hide. It feels like the first time in days that he's really _seen_ Ronan. He looks ragged. He has the scruffy start of a beard and his hair is past the point where it starts to piss him off. His face is pale, settled into a heavy worried expression like that's where it's used to being. Ronan looks tired. Ronan looks lonely.

Adam slides his hands up between their bodies and cups Ronan's face in his palms. Pulls Ronan in or pulls himself up until they're close enough that he can kiss Ronan's chapped bitten lips. He's still breathless, through, can only just brush against him before he has to turn away. He drops his hands to Ronan's shoulders, wraps his arms around his neck and presses his cheek against Ronan's, breathes uneven and harsh in his ear.

"Lynch." His voice punctures some last bit of the haze that he hadn't known was there, and there's nothing left but the truth: that this is where he has ended up, the place he has chosen to be, and it's awful and unforgivable and more wonderful than he could ever have imagined. His fingers dig into Ronan's back, painfully hard. "Oh, shit, _Lynch_."

"Hey," Ronan says, low and steady in his ear. "You made it."

Adam breathes in, holds the moment in his lungs for a second, and then he lets it go, lets it all go.

"Yeah," he says. "It's good to be back."

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/188518590510/it-all-will-fall-fall-right-into-place).


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